This teaser for an announced forthcoming documentary tags the TL one of the "sketchiest" in the world city, which kind of irks me the way calling it "colorful" or "crackhead-y" does. Yes, there is a lot of down-and-out going on there, and it's not the "safest" place in San Francisco.

As the teaser also shows, though, there are bold characters living there. Characters doing shit. Crazy shit? Yes, most of the time. But it's action-packed, as the folks stuck there try to squeeze some amount of pleasure from their daily circumstances.

The documentary follows the creation of an epic mural by renowned local artist Mona Caron celebrating the neighborhood that map makers like to omit and most SFers try to avoid.

UPDATE: Film is screening March 8, 2011, 7 p.m. - Bay Area Women in Film & Media (BAWIFM) Annual Shorts Showcase in celebration of International Women’s Day. Hobart Building, 582 Market St., San Francisco, CA. Get tickets.

Related Posts:

• Do Androids Dream of Wall Mounted Art?
• Video: Warping Minds at Musée Mécanique
• Urban Tree to Bicycle

Having questions about whether becoming "transhuman" will feel great or kind of, like, weird? Whether the promise of living forever and morphing into a god is something new when it's presented by science as opposed to superstition?

If so, this new art show probably won't be of any help to you. It assumes that ushering in a post-human intelligence (The Singularity) will absolutely be super awesome for everyone.

You can understand how an immortality cult of rich, powerful nerds has a need to equate science and art in order to make the idea of evolving into a machine feel less apocalyptic. But I fear they're gonna have to do better than this.

For example, I give Google credit for their Droid commercials, especially the one of the miners who discover a floating chunk of ore that converts humans into machines - it's bold and dark and, aside from the presumption that we'll be given a choice about the conversion, doesn't sugar coat the horror that would no doubt accompany the process. You've probably seen it:

I recommend repeated viewings. Pay attention to the storyline here: Open on what looks like earth, at a futuristic strip mine. A group of folks who cannot breathe the atmosphere enter a sci-fi gate, plunge deep into the earth, pass an empty helmet (it isn't like theirs - it looks like that of a current-day military pilot), and finally enter the chamber where the levitating mystery ore somehow leads one brave guy to take off his space suit's sleeve and insert his bare arm into the thing. His arm immediately turns into a machine (with a Verizon-powered Droid phone on the end, naturally).

The best thing about the spot is that it's fucking cool. The tangible sense of menace in the story raises more questions than it answers.

An earlier spot is simpler, and doesn't include choice - in the reflection of a closeup of an eyeball, we see someone is simply browsing online and in the process is converted into a machine:

In contrast, here is the propaganda of the Singularitarian cult in its rawest form:

There are no questions here, just answers. It reeks of desperation and fear - fear that no one else on the planet believes their immortalist vision and, therefore, their own day of Transformation will never come.

Relax, guys. Assuming the Machine Intelligence will take cognizance of us at all when it emerges, I'm sure it can resurrect us from the dead along with all of our relatives who have ever passed on. Take a lesson from your religious cousins - have a little faith. If nothing else, it's more becoming.

Ironically, Google's approach will probably sweeten people up to the notion of surrendering to the Singularity more than the pure propaganda approach will. It seems that the Google hive mind understands irony better than the wanna-be transhumans. Which is truly, epically, cosmically fucking ironic.

Related Posts:

• Tenderloin Getting a Documentary
• Video: Warping Minds at Musée Mécanique
• Urban Tree to Bicycle

Nestled amongst the schlock and obesity of Fisherman's Wharf is Musée Mécanique, a working collection of vintage carnival psychedelia. A true San Francisco treasure.

Here is your video:

Music performed & recorded by David Molina.

In this video, local musician and sound artist David Molina captured native audio from the museum and created surreal soundscapes. They were used in an art installation, Homage to Musée Mécanique.

Related Posts:

• Tenderloin Getting a Documentary
• Do Androids Dream of Wall Mounted Art?
• Moustache Magic

1939 was a big year for San Francisco, during which it attempted to convince the world that it had fully recovered from the catastrophes of 1906 and was once again a city to be reckoned with. Completion of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge was punctuated with the International Exhibition on Treasure Island.

For one photographer/photojournalist, that year left a lasting impression.

The photographer's name is Seymour Snaer, and the images were published in 1980 in a book titled, San Francisco 1939: An Intimate Photographic Portrait. Snaer had over 100 rolls of film from that one year, so publisher Bill Owens reprinted select shots from negatives, rescuing them from the bad cropping done by newspapers like the Examiner, who Snaer had worked for.

I've Googled around and not found much mention of the man, nor have I seen any of his images. The (used) book is listed on some sites, but none even have the cover image (above).

I'm including just some of the photos (in low-res format taken with my camera), and the captions that go with them. Additionally, I've excerpted some text from the body of the book. The writing has a raw feel to it; you can tell it was written by someone who doesn't write, but really has something to say.

Some of the highlights: Real fishermen using nets in the Bay; Belt and Southern Pacific trains; view from Twin Peaks; Sally Rand's Nude Ranch (NSFW); ski jumping on Treasure Island; auto polo.

Tip of the hat to Jonathan at Viracocha for gifting the book to me (that was a very kind way to get me to stop bugging you about your fantastic shop).

The above image is from the cover, portraying still and movie photographers capturing President Franklin Roosevelt's motorcade who came to see the Expo before it opened, in '38. Snaer writes:

Two of the guys in the bunch were very famous newsreel cameramen in the '30s, Joe Rucker and Frank Vail. They used hand-crank cameras ... I had big bulbs and all of a sudden - a bulb exploded! Secret Servicemen ran all over the place. It really embarrassed me. [p. 24]

The following images and text are all directly from the book. (Keep in mind that when he says "today," Snaer means 1980.)

Note: I'm pretty sure the copyright, originally reserved by Snaer himself, isn't being actively enforced, but in case it is, I'm only posting low-res images, and will gladly remove them if a rights-holder contacts me. Check out the photos/text after the jump...

Page 3

View from Twin Peaks

You can see Treasure Island in the background not as it is today with the Financial District blocking the view. The kid was up there with a kite ... and a beanie ... kids in those days wore beanies.

Page 4

Fishermen at the marina

Many sights you never see anymore ... fishermen caught herring early in the morning on the beach.

Page 5

Southern Pacific electric train across the Bay Bridge

Page 12

Steam train, California Belt line

A steam locomotive, the California Belt Line, fired by coal went around the docks bringing goods from the ships to the old warehouses. They still do it [!], but they don't use that type of engine.

Page 16

Boy in Chinatown

Page 28-29

International Exposition

They were the prettiest girls in Europe. It was the top show in the theatre building. You weren't supposed to take any pictures inside so I made a sneak shot at the end. I had a 1.5 lens on my camera. You had to really work to get a shot like that. It's entirely different with today's fast films, but that was an accomplishment.

Page 32-33

Sally Rand's Nude Ranch

Sally Rand's Nude Ranch

Sally Rand, the queen of the Fan Dancers, was supposed to be the place to go when you went to the Gayway. She was never there - her name was on the marquee outside. The women were on exhibit, pretending to do anything that you would do on the ranch ... frying eggs, twirling a lasso. There was a fence around the stage, which was painted with Western scenes. Later people objected to that kind of thing, and made them cover up. It wasn't Sally Rand's nude ranch anymore. The name was still the same because it was one of those permanent signs out front. But if you went inside, the girls were partly covered.

Page 34

International ski championship

The question would be "Where was the snow?" if you made a bet in a bar about the International Ski Championship held in San Francisco in 1939. They brought in a load of artificial snow and built this whole thing. It was sponsored by the Auburn Ski Club.

Page 36-37

Auto polo

They had mallets and a basketball as a polo ball. The idea was to make the cars roll over ... both guys had to jump out and then the car would go over [at least they have helmets on].

Page 46

Mailboat, off the Farallones Islands

Page 48

Flora Snaer and friend

Follow SU on Twitter.

UPDATE: I found this obituary for him, from this web page:

Mr. Snaer, an only child, was born in Oakland. He received a bachelor's degree from UC-Berkeley in 1933, and worked as a freelance photographer from 1936 to 1943. In 1937, Mr. Snaer took the first natural action shots of a track meet for the New York Mirror, according to Who's Who in California. Mr. Snaer joined the Examiner in 1943 and remained there until his retirement in 1978. In one of his prize-winning photos, titled "I'll be OK, Mom," Mr. Snaer captured a poignant moment in 1952 as a Marine sitting in a wheelchair leaned forward to embrace his mother upon his return from the Korean War. One of his photos, of a terrorist bombing at a San Francisco church in the 1970s, is included in "10,000 Eyes," a book published by the American Society of Media Photographers. Flora Snaer said her husband happened by chance to be in a perfect position to take that picture, after someone shooed him toward the sidewalk. He was there to take photos of a policemen's funeral. When the bomb exploded in the doorway, all the other photographers had to turn away and shelter themselves from the flying debris. Not Seymour. "He got the picture," Flora Snaer said. Mr. Snaer was also known for his Kodachrome color photographers for the 1939 World's Fair, which took place on Treasure Island. Denise Snaer-Gauder, Mr. Snaer's 43-year-old daughter, remembers serving as a "model" in some of her father's staged newspaper photographs when she was young. In one photo, she was the little girl hanging up her Christmas stocking. In another, she was playing in a schoolyard while a suspicious-looking man lurked nearby. Snaer-Gauder said her father was always ready to dash off in an instant to get a photo. He left his police scanner on all night, so he could hear any news bulletins as they were announced, and he always drove around with a couple of cameras in the car. Fran Ortiz, a retired Examiner photographer, said Mr. Snaer befriended him when he joined the staff as a rookie in 1962. Ortiz remembered the days the two photographers covered the Free Speech Movement at UC-Berkeley in the late 1960s. "It was war on Telegraph Avenue, and there was Seymour, right in the thick of it, getting remarkable images," Ortiz said. Ortiz described Mr. Snaer as a "true professional," someone who used his creativity and talent to make many memorable photographs - on deadline. "He was an inspiration to me," he said. Ortiz also remember Mr. Snaer's keen sense of humor. "In my image of him, Seymour always has a smile on his face and a pipe in his hand," he said.

Related Posts:

• Sally Rand in 1933: Unfair to Nudism! (NSFW)
• Zoom Around a Leveled San Francisco
• Happy Quake Day: The Mint

His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I, in addition to being the prototype of Frank Chu, is credited with visions of a suspension bridge across the Golden Gate (some suspect this to have been made up by others later) and a tunnel toward Oakland before those ideas were considered sane.

There were other eccentrics who paraded San Francisco's streets in the 1850s and 60s, but for some reason the only one we still celebrate is Norton. It is a monopoly that he, above all, would have cherished; but just like his attempt to corner the rice market in 1852 which eventually sent him over the rainbow, this monopoly may not last.

Submitted for your approval: Frederick Coombs, a.k.a., "George Washington the Second." Learn all about him after the jump...

San Francisco's Crackpots

San Francisco from the beginning demanded to be noticed in spite of, even because of, its most outrageous citizens. In an instant metropolis that breathed boom and bust, lusted after gold and silver, and openly worshiped monopoly capitalism, the embrace of stylized mad behavior was perhaps a middle finger raised at the polite societies in other cities of the time.

George Washington Coombs in the Pied Piper

Norton is the most famous of these characters. However, within the Palace Hotel's Pied Piper Bar & Grill hang two paintings. If you go into the lounge, past the eponymous Maxfield Parrish above the bar, and inside the restaurant, you'll find them (they are not Parrishes). The one on the left features Emperor Norton and the one on the right, a rival figure holding a placard that reads:

The Spirit of Washington still lives like a California pioneer. He lived like a beggar to give like a prince.

Washington the Second was a contemporary of Norton's, and in many ways his opposite, even though their stories have many similarities.

Emperor vs. President

Washington's first and most obvious departure from Norton was in title. One honored the nation's first president, the other embodied imperialism. San Franciscans must have seen in Coombs an alien quaintness.

Like Coombs, "Emperor" Norton was penniless and English by birth. But Norton's megalomania appears to have been linked to his loss of fortune. The roots of Coombs's intense patriotism and eccentricity were more complex and obscure. ((San Francisco Magazine, Dec. 1985, p. 22))

Washington the Second in costume; image courtesy San Francisco Public Library

Norton must have been more familiar - brash, monarchic, a true child of California gold and its excess. On the other hand, an article in the Daily Alta California from Nov. 16th, 1864, describes Washington the Second:

The old gent is quite the reverse of "Emp." (Emperor Norton). His eye is mild and void of the sacred fire of majesty which burns with such latent power in that of "Nort." (Emperor Norton). He is less dignified, and mixes more with common clay than does his colleague... He is also supposed to be void of sense, or in plain terms, "cracked;" but in his case, as in "Nort's," we think his head is clear. ((Daily Alta California, Nov. 16th, 1864))

Both Norton and Washington were venerated despite suspicions they might be faking their conditions, as if by embracing not only eccentricity, but even the pretense of it, San Francisco's residents created a bulwark against the city's prudish critics. It's little surprise Norton has dominated the historical accounts versus his contemporaries. Gold Rush San Francisco yearned for dominion that would rival history's most sprawling empires, such that only an Emperor would do.

Those who joined the gold rush had called themselves Argonauts and imagined themselves to be reliving a classical legend... They never tired of telling outsiders and one another that their city by the Golden Gate was the Mistress of the Pacific, the Queen City on her seven - or hundred - hills, looking westward to a destiny proportionately greater than that of imperial Rome. ((Imperial San Francisco, Gray Brechin, p. 14-15))

Norton amplified this sentiment, Washington did not. Recall the grandiosity and narcissism of Norton's most recognizable proclamation:

At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, ... declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.

It's not hard to understand how that would ring truer to San Franciscans in the 1860s, as the city itself was deflating after the gold rush, than something like this from Washington:

If all the rich were to marry all the poor, would not this realize a beautiful equality so long dreamed of by Poets and Philosophers?

Similarities and Differences

Like Norton, Washington tempered his madness with inventive thinking. Before assuming his presidential title, Washington succeeded in business by inventing a ditch-digging machine for farmers in Napa Valley. He developed a train propulsion system that used electromagnetism and even demonstrated it on a small scale. Most notably, he built a working telegraph in 1840, just months before Samuel Morse scored the patent.

But Washington should not be denied his eccentric's cred, either:

• He wrote a book on the pseudoscience of phrenology, which attempted to assess people's personalities based on the contours of their skulls (one of his "clients" was Vice President Richard Johnson).
• He went on an expedition to Chicago (his home-town) to lure women to San Francisco, crossing the Isthmus of Panama on foot with a traveling museum of live animals and gold showcasing California's assets.
• He billed the U.S. Congress $17,733,000,000,000,000 for expenses he supposedly incurred while contributing to the well-being of the nation.
• He self-published his own autobiography, titled, The Dawn of the Millenium! Splendid Discovery! A Beautiful Plan to Give Every Man (and Woman Also) a Nice House and Lot, And a Nice Little Wife or a Husband for All.

But his differences from Norton were perhaps more relevant to discovering why we should raise Washington's stature:

• Emperor Norton was against women's rights while Washington went to Sacramento and lectured for them.
• Washington/Coombs once demonstrated for the rights of Irish immigrants in New York.
• Washington once held up pro-Union banners in front an angry secessionist crowd in a San Francisco theater until he was pelted off stage, where Norton remained neutral in the North/South debate.

And finally, whereas Norton was a crude speculating capitalist, Coombs, before he became Washington the Second, was a hard-working businessman who nonetheless maintained a sense of charity.

In his early years, Coombs generally shared his money with poor daguerreotypists [of which he was one], needy friends, and destitute women. The press warmly recognized him as a philanthropist. ((San Francisco magazine, Dec. 1985, p. 24))

Today, we're living through the consequences of an economic system that sacrificed long-term viability for the sake of delusional short-term riches. On a global scale, capitalism should be re-assessing itself, criticizing itself - for its own sake. To the degree that the gold rush was an instance of the same get-rich-quick ethic we suffer from today, perhaps we owe it to our beloved city and to ourselves to reconsider the "majesty" of our "Emperor," and instead honor another figure who, in a quite different way, channeled the essence of San Francisco by transgressing the limits of sanity.

Washington the Second with skulls; image courtesy San Francisco Public Library

Vote for your favorite San Francisco crackpot in the comments.

Related Posts:

• Those Damned 49ers – and I Don’t Mean the Football Team
• Photos of San Francisco in 1939
• Zoom Around a Leveled San Francisco

Troy Holden took a photo of a sign tacked up next to the Chinatown Banksy piece. A friend has translated it as:

Please don't file a police complaint, the cops are investigating and it will be taken down soon.

A quick call to the police indicates no report and no investigation. According to Sgt. Vinnie Catanzaro:

I'm not aware of any issue that has come up.

So, who posted this, and why?

ALSO, here's a cool new video from the site that broke this story yesterday:

Here's their very detailed Flickr set.

ALSO, Banksy #3 and #4.

Related Posts:

• New Banksy Art in Chinatown?
• The Urban Adventurers
• When She Had a Face

Warholian.com is claiming it is:

Our English mate is in town fresh for the premier of Exit Through the Gift Shop his new documentary and obviously was up early this morning bombing our lovely city.

Can anyone confirm this for us? If you can spot the exact street, we can confirm in Google Streetview.

UPDATE 1: Above photo has been spotted in the photostream of this Flickr user. Still no clues on exact location, though. (Via)

UPDATE 2: Apparently, there's another one in The Mission. (Via)

UPDATE 3: Confirmed! Another Flickr user has seen the art in Chinatown and uploaded a pic:

UPDATE 4: Commenter Chartno3, who seems to be the owner of the original second Flickr image, gives the location, Grant and Commercial Streets, and here we confirm that it is where claimed (who says I don't do investigative journalism?):

UPDATE 5: I should be clear. The only thing we've "confirmed" is that two pieces have gone up that look like signature Banksy pieces - one in Chinatown and one in the Mission. They could be copycats. One internet commenter suggests Banksy usually signs his pieces. (True or not, it would be just as easy to fake that, so I'm not sure where this leads us.)

While we're at it, one other question that deserves asking is, were these pieces done (and with or without permission) by some marketing firm as publicity for the film?

(Spotted @)

Related Posts:

• Warholian Video on Banksy Chinatown Bomb – Also, Police are NOT Investigating
• The Urban Adventurers
• When She Had a Face

An effective title sequence can give a film a lot of good will in the mind of the viewer while the filmmaker tries to establish what's necessary to draw folks in. If there was an Oscar category for Best Title Sequence (it has been suggested, and was rejected in 1999), "Up in the Air" would have gotten a vote from me, were I a voting member.

And not just because it features San Francisco very prominently. (You may recall that there are a total of 3 shots of San Francisco from the air in this sequence - watch it here.) More after the jump...

A site called The Art of the Title Sequence is honoring "Up in the Air" with an interview of Gareth Smith from Shadowplay Studio.

Click on the image below to view the entire sequence in video:

Click on this image to view the entire sequence

The whole interview is worth a read, even if you're not a design nerd. I liked the explanation of some of the other treatments they did for Director Jason Reitman, especially this:

We experimented with a technique where we printed each frame of the footage on an ink jet printer, then color xeroxed it to give it a vintage quality. At this point the music was going to be “Ramblin’ Man” by Hank Williams. It’s an old recording – and the vintage look was appropriate to the sound of the song. We all really loved this look, but Jason ended up changing the music to a modern recording of “This Land is Your Land,” so the heavily treated look didn’t work quite as well.

I may have missed a shot or two of SF - extra credit if you can shame me in the comments.

UPDATE: Just realized that SXSW has a Title Design Competition, and yes, Shadowplay is a finalist for "Up in the Air."

Related Posts:

• Tenderloin Getting a Documentary
• Do Androids Dream of Wall Mounted Art?
• Video: Warping Minds at Musée Mécanique

I really dig this close-up shot of the purple elven diva we linked to here. And I love seeing how she used to look (2007) before HATERS uglified her.

(Spotted @)

Related Posts:

• Name That Spot
• Graffiti Guy Girafa Arrested
• Photos of San Francisco in 1939

The artist Wayne Thiebaud is known for his paintings of "cakes, pastries...and toilets," but this 1977 interpretation of a mythical intersection at 24th Street and Mariposa, submitted by friend o' the blog Jacki, is our favorite - for obvious reasons.

Thiebaud once said:

"I was playing around with the abstract notions of edge - I was fascinated, living in San Francisco, by the way different streets just came in and then just vanished. So I sat out on a street corner and began to paint them." It was the "sense of edges appearing, things swooping around their own edges that I loved," he recounted (Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2000, p. 58).

(via Goldenfiddlr)

Related Posts:

• Photos of San Francisco in 1939
• Emperor Norton vs. George Washington the Second
• Sweet Vintage Street Sweeper, circa 1950